What a Dick!

Ouch, doesn’t this seem just a bit harsh? Well, maybe for anyone who is not named Dick Cheney.

in retrospect it is hard to say that Cheney’s decisions were anything but deeply prescient, and one thing is certain: The invasion ended Islamic terrorism and did not create a civil war that ironically allowed al-Qaida to flourish in an area where it had no prior presence, ultimately begetting an even more dangerous and inhumane splinter group called ISIS that continues to threaten American lives to this day.

Many speakers at Thursday’s event commented on the unique courage demonstrated by Cheney’s willingness to commit thousands of young American soldiers, airmen, sailors, and Marines to death or permanent incapacitation abroad despite his admission that he intentionally avoided military service when he himself was a young man during a time of war.

Cheney was also praised for his ethical decision not to arrange for a company which had very recently paid him tens of millions of dollars and in which he had “a continuing financial interest” to become one of the largest beneficiaries of United States federal spending in Iraq. One can only imagine the repercussions if he had actually done something like that.

Here’s to Dick Cheney!

 

too much democracy?

Andrew Sullivan has written a somewhat ridiculous article in New York Magazine called Democracies end when they are too democratic.

Socrates seemed pretty clear on one sobering point: that “tyranny is probably established out of no other regime than democracy.” What did Plato mean by that? Democracy, for him, I discovered, was a political system of maximal freedom and equality, where every lifestyle is allowed and public offices are filled by a lottery. And the longer a democracy lasted, Plato argued, the more democratic it would become. Its freedoms would multiply; its equality spread. Deference to any sort of authority would wither; tolerance of any kind of inequality would come under intense threat; and multiculturalism and sexual freedom would create a city or a country like “a many-colored cloak decorated in all hues.”

This rainbow-flag polity, Plato argues, is, for many people, the fairest of regimes. The freedom in that democracy has to be experienced to be believed — with shame and privilege in particular emerging over time as anathema. But it is inherently unstable. As the authority of elites fades, as Establishment values cede to popular ones, views and identities can become so magnificently diverse as to be mutually uncomprehending. And when all the barriers to equality, formal and informal, have been removed; when everyone is equal; when elites are despised and full license is established to do “whatever one wants,” you arrive at what might be called late-stage democracy. There is no kowtowing to authority here, let alone to political experience or expertise…

And it is when a democracy has ripened as fully as this, Plato argues, that a would-be tyrant will often seize his moment.

That’s an entertaining tale, but it’s somewhat silly to suggest the United States has “too much democracy”, if you define democracy as equality. For a long time we have had rule by a stable triumvirate of elites – a civilian government elite, a big business elite, and a military/security/intelligence elite. The big business elite pays off the politicians and bureaucrats in the civilian government so they can produce the propaganda to stay elected, the civilian government makes sure the rules are written unfairly in favor of big business so they can make enormous profits at the expense of the rest of society, and the military/security/intelligence elite gets a huge share of our national resources and free reign to do just about anything it wants abroad, in exchange for not overthrowing the civilian government which it could easily do any time. It’s been a very stable three-legged stool.

In the past there has been just enough upward mobility for those of us in the general population to look the other way and buy into the propaganda enough to keep the system stable. Most of us can’t join the true elite, but the middle class have been able to train in professions and become moderately wealthy, while the working class have been able to get jobs that pay enough to join the middle class. The poor have been too few and too divided to organize politically. I think what is starting to happen is that this system of upward mobility is starting to break down now on a large enough scale that a significant chunk of the population is no longer buying into the propaganda and supporting the elites, and the whole political system is starting to teeter. I think it’s due partly to economic factors outside our control, like automation, and partly due to the short-sighted greed of the elites who are insisting on gobbling up a larger and larger share of a pie that is no longer growing as fast as it once did, if all. Environmental factors may be starting to play a role too, although I am still unsure of that.

True democracy, to me, would be a system that allows us to come to a consensus on policies that most of us, not just a majority but almost all of us, can accept, even if these policies are not everyone’s first choice. In a U.S. context it also has to be about true equality of opportunity, if not equality itself. How can anyone look at what is going on in our society and political system and think we have “too much democracy”?

value of trees

There have been a lot of studies on the value of urban trees. Well, here’s another. This one is notable for giving a canopy target at which value is maximized (30% at the property level, 38% at the county level).

The implicit value of tree cover in the U.S.: A meta-analysis of hedonic property value studies

Trees in residential neighborhoods and communities provide benefits for homeowners that are capitalized into residential property values. In this paper, we collected data from hedonic property value studies and merged these data with ancillary spatial data describing forest and socio-economic characteristics surrounding each study area to conduct a meta-analysis of the impact of tree canopy cover on the value of residential properties. The meta-analysis suggests that property-level tree cover of about 30% and county-level tree cover of about 38% maximize the implicit price of tree cover in property values. Currently, tree cover in the original study areas was about 14%, on average, around or near study properties. The empirical results, therefore suggest under investment of tree cover on private property from the perspective of individual property owners and from a societal perspective. The findings also have implications for community forest programs regarding planting trees and protection of mature trees to address potential changes in tree abundance, species diversity and stand age due to development and climate change.

I was inverted…

From the BBC:

A Russian jet fighter that intercepted a US Air Force reconnaissance plane on Friday did so in an “unsafe and unprofessional manner” over the Baltic Sea, the Pentagon has said.

It says the fighter performed a barrel roll plane over the American plane.

Wait, does this sound familiar?

Jane Jacobs

This article about Jane Jacobs is most useful because it mentions all of her major works. It talks quite a bit about Dark Age Ahead. I read Dark Age Ahead, and yet it doesn’t stick in my mind. I am ashamed to admit that I have only read the first chapter of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, and yet that first chapter sticks in my mind. I am lucky enough to live in one of the great American cities, and in fact a neighborhood that she visited and commented on. I had to spend a few years away from it to really come to understand how great a walkable street grid with a mix of homes, businesses, workplaces and green spaces really is, and how rare it unfortunately is. One day I’ll sit down on a bench in one of those green spaces and finish Death and Life.

green space and mental health

Here’s a new study on green space and health, based on the large-scale nurses’s study. One interesting finding is that mental health explains around 30% of the total benefit.

Exposure to Greenness and Mortality in a Nationwide Prospective Cohort Study of Women

In models adjusted for mortality risk factors (age, race/ethnicity, smoking, and individual- and area-level socioeconomic status), women living in the highest quintile of cumulative average greenness (accounting for changes in residence during follow-up) in the 250m area around their home had a 12% lower rate of all-cause non-accidental mortality (95% CI 0.82, 0.94) compared to those in the lowest quintile. Results were consistent for the 1,250m area, although the relationship was slightly attenuated. These associations were strongest for respiratory and cancer mortality. Findings from a mediation analysis suggest that the association between greenness and mortality may be at least partly mediated by physical activity, particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers, social engagement, and depression.

scenario analysis

Maybe this is not of interest to everyone, but I am always looking for new ways to analyze and communicate the results of alternatives and scenarios.

The diversity of socio-economic pathways and CO2 emissions scenarios: Insights from the investigation of a scenarios database

The new scenario framework developed by the climate change research community rests on the fundamental logic that a diversity of socio-economic pathways can lead to the same radiative forcing, and therefore that a given level of radiative forcing can have very different socio-economic impacts. We propose a methodology that implements a “scenario discovery” cluster analysis and systematically identifies diverse groups of scenarios that share common outcomes among a database of socio-economic scenarios. We demonstrate the methodology with two examples using the Shared Socio-economic Pathways framework. We find that high emissions scenarios can be associated with either high or low per capita GDP growth, and that high productivity growth and catch-up are not necessarily associated with high per capita GDP and high emissions.

infectious disease

The Royal Society says that the annual number of disease outbreaks and types of diseases causing them have both increased since 1980, although the fraction of the population affected has actually decreased. I assume this last trend has to do with population growth. I am not sure this should be comforting. If there are more outbreaks and more different types, it seems like there would be more potential for something really bad to emerge and then get out of control. But this article isn’t really about that, it’s just a presentation of the data.

Our analyses indicate that the total number of outbreaks and richness of causal diseases have each increased globally since 1980 (figure 1a). Bacteria and viruses represented 70% of the 215 diseases in our dataset and caused 88% of outbreaks over time. Sixty-five per cent of diseases in our dataset were zoonoses that collectively caused 56% of outbreaks (compared to 44% of outbreaks caused by human-specific diseases). Non-vector transmitted pathogens were more common (74% of diseases) and caused more outbreaks (87%) than vector transmitted pathogens (table 1). Salmonellosis caused the most outbreaks of any disease in the dataset (855 outbreaks reported since 1980). However, viral gastroenteritis (typically caused by norovirus) was responsible for the greatest number of recorded cases: more than 15 million globally since 1980.

It’s interesting how we tend to be less afraid of diseases that are more common and more afraid of ones that are less common, even though a given person would be more likely to suffer from a common disease. Of course, this analysis doesn’t take into account the severity of the disease and suffering caused, which should certainly be a factor in what kinds of controls and research we invest our efforts and money in.

April 2016 in Review

3 most frightening stories

  • The U.S. government’s dominant ideology of free trade and globalization may have roots in U.S. government propaganda designed to provide hidden subsidies to Japan and Korea, our Cold War allies in Asia. And resulting financial deregulation in the 1990s may have been the beginning of the end for the U.S. empire.
  • A new study says that ice melting in Antarctica could double sea level rise projections in the long term. Meanwhile, in the short term, the drought in Southeast and South Asia is getting more and more severe.
  • Robert Paxton says Trump is pretty much a fascist. Although conditions are different and he doesn’t believe everything the fascists believed. Umberto Eco once said that fascists don’t believe anything, they will say anything and then what they do once in office has nothing to do with what they said.

3 most hopeful stories

  • Brookings has a new report on encouraging innovation in the water sector. A lot of it is just about charging more, and it should be fairly obvious why that is politically controversial even if it is the right thing economically. But the report did have an explanation of decoupling (p. 28) which I found helpful. Decoupling is an answer to the puzzle of how a utility can support conservation without losing its revenue base.
  • The U.S. Department of Energy says the technical potential of solar panels is to supply about 39% of all energy use. And electric cars may be about to come roaring back in a big way.
  • Better management of agricultural soil might be able to play a big role in carbon sequestration.

3 most interesting stories

ecosystem disservices

This paper proposes the idea of “ecosystem disservices” to address criticisms scientists have made of the ecosystem services concept.

Limitations of the Ecosystem Services versus Disservices Dichotomy

Ongoing debate over the ecosystem services (ES) concept highlights a range of contrasting views and misconceptions. Schröter et al. (2014) summarise seven recurring arguments against the ES concept, which broadly relate to ethical concerns, translation across the science—policy interface, and how the concept’s normative aims and optimistic assumptions affect ES as a scientific approach. In particular, recent criticism has focused on how the concept is unable to address ecological complexity due to the limitations of the economic stock–flow model that ES is based on (Norgaard 2010). Acknowledging ecosystem disservices (EDS) (i.e. outcomes of ecosystem functions that negatively affect human communities) has been suggested as a way to account for this ecological complexity (McCauley 2006; Lyytimäki 2015). The impact of EDS on communities (i.e. the ‘cost’ of the action) can be measured financially, or through changes in individual or social well-being. McCauley (2006) and Lyytimäki (2015) list EDS examples like pest damage to crops, or trees removing water from watersheds.